Is Thanksgiving a Pagan Holiday?

IS THANKSGIVING A PAGAN HOLIDAY?
By James Trimm

The Pilgrims were a splinter group from the fringes of the Puritan movement. Many of them were leaving a Britain which was too politically difficult for them, to start a “perfect” new world.

The first feast lasted 3 days and celebrated their first harvest in 1621,which, thanks to a little help from their native American friends, was abundant.

Thanksgiving as a “holiday” come from a cross between a conventional harvest festival and the relief of the Pilgrim Fathers when, after serious hardship which had whittled their numbers down from 105 to 43, they finally realized their settlement was going to make it.

Thanksgiving was influenced in part by the English and continental European Harvest festivals popular in the Puritan movement, with churches decorated with cornucopias, pumpkins, corn, wheat sheaves, and other harvest bounty, English and European harvest hymns sung on Thanksgiving weekend and scriptural lections drawn from the biblical stories relating to the Jewish harvest festival of Sukkot.

President Abraham Lincoln proclaimed a national Thanksgiving Day, to be celebrated on the final Thursday in November 1863. U.S. Presidents annually declared a Thanksgiving Day each year on the final Thursday of November. In 1938 F.D.R. broke with this tradition, moving Thanksgiving to the next-to-last Thursday in November.

On October 6, 1941 the U.S. Legislature passed a joint resolution setting this last-Thursday date for the holiday beginning in 1942. But, in December of that year the Senate passed an amendment requiring that Thanksgiving be observed each year on the fourth Thursday of November (This was sometimes the last Thursday and sometimes the next to last). On December 26, 1941 F.D.R. signed the bill into law, for the first time making the date of Thanksgiving a matter of federal law.

Thanksgiving is not of pagan origin, it originates from the Puritan pilgrims who were influenced by the biblical harvest festival of Sukkot.

James Trimm
Worldwide Nazarene Assembly of Elohim
http://www.wnae.org

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Comment by Barz Ganya on November 22, 2009 at 12:27pm: I believe the Pilgrims were the root and offspring of David and the very Chosen, representing Messiah as the Branch and Vine, from which all the other tribes branched out originally, but reestablished through this small tribe/people in the days of the Pilgrims...I don't think England was too politically difficult, but way too corrupt and unclean, being governed by swine, as latter day America has become...The Plymouth Plantation represents the Glory fo G-d in the New Nation of a New Israel (New England) to me..."Come out of Her and be seperate," was all they had in mind and did in fact accomplish for a time...Native Americans are mostly mythological and represent another tribe of Israel that came out of Jerusalem before its destruction after the crucfixion...and perhaps represent the "other sheep" Messiah referredto in the Gospel accounts...I agree about the Sukkot theory...
There are no believers who deserve "nice juicy steaks"..All are debtors,worthy of crumbs...
Praise G-d! Happy Thanksgiving...

Comment by James Trimm on November 22, 2009 at 12:53pm: Well I am not an advocate of Puritan Replacement theology, or Churchianity in general, but they were not pagans.

Comment by Charlayne Crawford on November 22, 2009 at 1:32pm: i never considered Thanksgiving to be pagan, but i do believe that the original natives were the jews from spain and the puritans were anti semitic and treated them so horribly because of it. your thoughts or studies on this?

Comment by terry on November 22, 2009 at 10:56pm: 1621..hmmm do not think so for my anscestors sat at that meal and it was a week long festival,it was in 1626 that this feast was held....thanksgiving pagan,to me it is a time of giving thanks that my anscestors survived their first yr in this harsh land...

Comment by James Trimm on November 22, 2009 at 11:12pm: No it was in fact 1621:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thanksgiving_(United_States)

Comment by terry on November 23, 2009 at 7:55pm: i owe an apology,went back over family records and realized the family did come over in 1620,wow a long time,and many families are still around because of the natives who helped them in this land..but still i see nothing wrong with families who had ancestors who came over on the mayflower still giving thanks..i just wish it was like the fist one and week long event.

Comment by J. Jury (אליהוא) on October 31, 2010 at 2:17pm: It's always a good time to give thanks. :-)

Comment by Amber Ward on October 31, 2010 at 3:43pm: I have a bit of a problem with my home England being referred to as goverened by swine, Blessings Amber

Comment by will brinson: ferguson on November 23, 2010 at 8:33am: To whom it may concern:

Thanksgiving may not have been taken from pagan origins but as soon as the pilgrims though to worship Iaue
with Iaue's end of the Year Harvest Feast on a different day than what Iaue instructed it then and there became pagan in nature, and is an abomination in the eyes of Iaue Elohim, as It is written:

{Debarim 4:2}
Ye shall not add unto the word which I command you,
neither shall ye diminish ought from it,
that ye may keep the commandments of Iaue your Elohim which I command you.

{Debarim 12:32}
What thing soever I command you, observe to do it:
thou shall not add thereto, nor diminish from it.

{Yesha-Iau 30:1}
Woe to the rebellious children, says Iaue, that take counsel, but not of Me;
and that cover with a covering, but not of My Spirit, that they may add sin to sin:

If one is not going to do things the way Iaue instructed they might as well not pretend
as if Iaue is on their side in such an endeavors, or should I rephrase my statement and say
they might as well stop pretending that they are on Iaue’s side.

{Mishle 30:6}
Add thou not unto his words, lest he reprove thee, and thou be found a liar.

The Thanks Giving Holi-day, celebrated on Nov. 25 of the Pagan calendar, became a pagan festival the minute that they thought to worship Iaue in their way instead as He decreed. Keep in mind the definition of the word pagan meaning "that which is without Iaue".

{Qorintiyim Aleph 10:21}
Ye cannot drink the cup of Iaue, and the cup of devils:
ye cannot be partakers of Iaue's table, and of the table of devils.

One should not push their chances this late in the game.

{Mattith-Iau 4:17}
REPENT: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.

{Timotheos BAt 4:2}
Preach the word; be instant in season, out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort with all longsuffering and doctrine.

From a bondservant of Iau-Shua the Anointed One,
will

Comment by James Trimm on November 23, 2010 at 12:44pm: Actually Will we have an example of a belated Sukkot celebration becoming a biblical festival all of its own in Scripture.

Channukah was originally, like Thanksgiving, modeled after Sukkot, but observed on a different date:

[9] And now see that ye keep the feast of tabernacles in the month Casleu.
(2Macc. 1:9)

[1] Now Maccabeus and his company, the Lord guiding them, recovered the temple and the city:
[2] But the altars which the heathen had built in the open street, and also the chapels, they pulled down.
[3] And having cleansed the temple they made another altar, and striking stones they took fire out of them, and offered a sacrifice after two years, and set forth incense, and lights, and shewbread.
[4] When that was done, they fell flat down, and besought the Lord that they might come no more into such troubles; but if they sinned any more against him, that he himself would chasten them with mercy, and that they might not be delivered unto the blasphemous and barbarous nations.
[5] Now upon the same day that the strangers profaned the temple, on the very same day it was cleansed again, even the five and twentieth day of the same month, which is Casleu.
[6] And they kept the eight days with gladness, as in the feast of the tabernacles, remembering that not long afore they had held the feast of the tabernacles, when as they wandered in the mountains and dens like beasts.
[7] Therefore they bare branches, and fair boughs, and palms also, and sang psalms unto him that had given them good success in cleansing his place.
[8] They ordained also by a common statute and decree, That every year those days should be kept of the whole nation of the Jews.
(2Macc. 10:1-8)

This is a Biblical festival above in 2Maccabees and also in 1Maccabees 4:36-61

Moreover in John 10:22 Yeshua was at the Temple to celebrate Channukah. How do we know he was not just incidentally there, but there for Channukah?

Yeshua lived in Galil. In John 7:1 we are told that he was avoiding Judea because certain Judeans sought to kill him. In 7:10 we read that he came secretly to Jerusalem for Sukkot anyway. Yeshua is in Jerusalem for John 7-8 and then returns again to come to the Temple for Channukah in 10:22. Now if we take the information from the previous verses we realize Yeshua was not casually present by coincidence at Channukah, but like Sukkot, thought it was worth coming to the Temple from Galil even though there were Judeans who wanted to kill him.